Fotoeins Friday: Chile from 10000 feet, summer light on the Andes

With the light of the setting summer sun striking the foothills and the mountains in the Chilean Andes, this was the view east outside the plane from about 10000 feet (3000 metres) prior to approach and descent to LSC La Serena airport. This place was already familiar: I’d been coming here for astronomy research semi-regularly over the last ten years (since 1995), and it’s where I would live for the next five years (to 2011). It’s a fascinating individual experience to internalize the day-to-day surroundings which eventually become routine over a period of weeks, months, and years. On occasion, I still have difficulty grasping my own history.

At a latitude of 30 degrees south, the area shown here is near the southern limit of the Atacama desert in Región de Coquimbo. A group of white domes (telescopes) is clustered at the summit of Cerro Tololo (centre-left); the domes for the SOAR Telescope and Gemini South sit along the ridge of Cerro Pachón (centre-right). The mail-drop or “buzón” for the observatories is at the bottom of the ridge where the unpaved graded dirt road splits to Tololo and Pachón. To the east in the background are the north-south spine or ‘cord’ (Cordillera) marked by the Andes mountain range, and towering thunderstorms looming over the Argentina-Chile border. Directions to the nearest cities are marked: Vicuña (north), La Serena (northwest), Andacollo (west), and Ovalle (southwest).

I made the photo above with a Canon Powershot A510 camera on-board the LAN 1-hour flight from Santiago to La Serena. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-6Rq.